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Inventory # AOL0919-E18000-001

BCSFA CGP CSPWC OC RCA
1909 - 1998
Canadian

Monument for an Artist
acrylic on canvas
signed and dated 1989 and on verso titled on the gallery label
58 1/2 x 49 1/2 in, 148.6 x 125.7 cm

PROVENANCE
Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Scott Watson, Jack Shadbolt, 1990, page 192
Jack Shadbolt: Paintings from Concurrent Exhibitions, Bau-Xi Gallery, 1990, reproduced, unpaginated

EXHIBITED
Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto, Jack Shadbolt: Paintings from Concurrent Exhibitions, February 20 - March 11, 1990


“I am really an image maker at heart, strung between the impulse to respond intuitively and the need for detached statement. These recent works tend to be more explicit in their imagery — no less enigmatic but more direct in expression. I hope they are still alive with the process of painting itself for I alternate defined with free and improvisational elements, trying as I have tried all my life to reconcile nature with abstraction and deliberation with intuition.”

Throughout Jack Shadbolt’s long and explorative career, his work underwent many aesthetic shifts. However, uniting his impressive oeuvre is the enduring belief in the social role of the artist and their ability to create an aesthetic language to connect to the larger public. As Scott Watson states, Shadbolt longed “to make a work that is so dense and potent for the imagination that it becomes a symbol in the mind and therefore becomes part of the collective consciousness of its time.”

In this later work, Shadbolt’s mastery of colour and sweeping abstract forms intersect in a towering pyramidal structure dedicated to the figure of the artist. To Shadbolt, the artist is vital in translating cultural phenomena, sentiment, and history into a compelling and legible visual message. The iconic shape of Shadbolt’s painterly edifice is reminiscent of the ambitious, 1920 utopian Constructivist project Monument to the Third International by Russian artist, Vladimir Tatlin. Intended to be a rotating structure housing an International Communist collective, the press, and a public radio station, Tatlin’s structure was never fully realized beyond wooden models and sketches. Despite their differing cultures and timelines, Shadbolt and Tatlin’s visionary “monuments” are emblems dedicated to public connection; for Tatlin, it was via the media, and for Shadbolt, it was via the artist.

Shadbolt says of the creative process “I know from hard experience that ideas do not necessarily make art – I have to confront the irrational, to wait for the insights to come and to be prepared to re-work the concept until the components fuse and ignite.” In Monument for an Artist, those conceptual components come together as vivid fragments of chromatic blocks, beams and flags. Poised against a serene blue skyscape, the monument stands as a celebration of the composite elements of art making; creativity, process, intuition, perspective, structure, and expression.

Shadbolt’s Monument for an Artist is a dynamic expression of his belief in the artist as an essential and inspiring figure in society; a role that Shadbolt himself took on. Throughout his productive/active career, Shadbolt was also an avid supporter of young artists and founded VIVA (the Vancouver Institute for Visual Arts) in 1988, an annual awards program for visual artists in British Columbia. Shadbolt’s Monument for an Artist is a striking and poignant reminder of not only the indelible role of artists within communities, but of his own monumental role within Canada’s art history.

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